Robert Fogel, 86; Wrote on Economics of Slavery

The professor, who received a Nobel for economics, aroused
objections in academic circles through his use of cliometrics, which
applies economic theory and statistical methods to the study of
history.

Robert W. Fogel, a Nobel laureate economist whose number-
crunching empiricism upended established thinking, most
provocatively about the economics of slavery, died Tuesday in Oak
Lawn, Illinois. He was 86.

His death was announced by the Booth School of Business at the
University of Chicago, where he had been a distinguished professor.
He lived in the Hyde Park section of Chicago.

Dr. Fogel, a rumpled former New Yorker by turns amiable and
combative, was widely known for work that aroused objections if not
open hostility in academic circles, chiefly through his pioneering
use of cliometrics, which applies economic theory and statistical
methods to the study of history. (Clio was history's muse in Greek
mythology.)

He first came to prominence in 1964, when he contended that
railroads had been far less important to the nation's growth than
economists had long asserted. An outgrowth of doctoral work at Johns
Hopkins University in Baltimore, his book "Railroads and American
Economic Growth" became an immediate classic.

But it was the publication 10 years later of "Time on the Cross,"
a two-volume study of slavery, written with Stanley L. Engerman,
that propelled Dr. Fogel into the critical spotlight and instant
celebrity.

They contended that slavery had not been, as widely portrayed, an
inefficient system destined for collapse, with slaves living in
virtual concentration camps and worked to death.

Rather, after studying medical records, cotton yields and other
data, the authors argued that slavery had been highly efficient in
utilizing economies of scale and that plantation owners had regarded
workers as economic assets whom they were inclined to treat at least
as well as livestock. That tended to limit exploitation, Dr. Fogel
and his colleague found, declaring, in fact, that life for slaves in
the South was generally better than that of industrial workers in
the North.

An intellectual firestorm resulted. Some critics accused Dr.
Fogel, who was married to an African-American woman, of being an
apologist for slavery, though he and Dr. Engerman had been explicit
in acknowledging that slaves had been exploited in ways not captured
by statistical data.

Despite the attacks, the authors did not budge from their
findings and their main point -- that slavery would not have ended
without the Civil War.

"Everything Bob touches is controversial," said Claudia D.
Goldin, a former student of Dr. Fogel's and now an economics
professor at Harvard University. "It stems from the fact that he
thinks outside the box."

Dr. Fogel received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences
in 1993, sharing it with a fellow cliometrician, Douglass C. North.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences cited Dr. Fogel for clarifying
railroads' role in American economic development and the economic
role of slavery.

He spent the latter decades of his career focused on demography
and how standards of living, including nutritional resources, affect
health and longevity. Through much of history, he found, shorter
people and those with low body mass were more prone to illness.

He analyzed Civil War draft and pension records, linking them to
mid-19th-century and early 20th-century census records to show how
improved health enhances economic productivity.

He estimated that one-third of per capita economic growth in
Britain between 1790 and 1980 was due to improved nutrition.

Dr. Fogel's range of inquiry was extraordinarily wide; his
monumental study of Britain, for example, involved medicine,
physiology, demography and statistics in addition to economics and
history. …

The rest of this article is only available to active members of Questia

Print this page

While we understand printed pages are helpful to our users, this limitation is necessary
to help protect our publishers' copyrighted material and prevent its unlawful distribution.
We are sorry for any inconvenience.